Alexey Alexandrovich Arseniev recalls his life, starting from the first sensations and ending with days in a foreign land. Memories are interrupted by discussions of an abandoned homeland.

Book one

Alexey Arsenyev was born in the 70s of the XIX century in the middle zone of Russia, in the estate of his father, Alexander Sergeyevich, on the farm Kamenka. His childhood passed in the silence of a discreet Russian nature. Boundless fields with aromas of herbs and flowers in the summer, boundless snow expanses in the winter gave rise to a heightened sense of beauty that shaped its inner world and remained for life. For hours, he could watch the movement of clouds in the high sky, the work of a beetle entangled in bread ears, the game of sunlight on the parquet of the living room.

People entered his circle of attention gradually. Mother occupied a special place among them: he felt his “inseparability” with her.

Everything and everything we love is our torment - what is this eternal fear of losing our loved one!

Father attracted by his cheerfulness, cheerful disposition, breadth of nature and his glorious past (he participated in the Crimean War). The brothers were older, and in the children's amusements, the boy's girlfriend became the younger sister Olya. Together they explored the secret corners of the garden, vegetable garden, manor buildings. Childhood is remembered by Arsenyev only on summer and sunny days.

Then a man named Baskakov appeared in the house, becoming the first teacher of Alyosha. Baskakov came from a good family, and could live comfortably, but, still being a high school student, he left home after a quarrel with his father. When the father died, he quarreled with his brother, not sharing the inheritance. Since then, Baskakov has wandered around the world. He treated people with contempt, and could not get along in any house for more than a few months, but he lived with the Arsenyevs for about three years, loving this family and, especially, Alyosha.

Baskakov was smart and educated, but he did not have any pedagogical experience, and, having quickly learned the boy to write, read, and even French, he did not introduce the student to the real sciences. Its effect was in a romantic relationship with history and literature, in worship of Pushkin and Lermontov, who took possession of Alyosha’s soul forever.

Soon, Alyosha first faced death - his younger sister Nadia suddenly died. Then the grandmother died, and the Arsenyevs inherited her estate. These two deaths made Alyosha addicted to reading cheap books about saints and great martyrs. This strange hobby continued throughout the bench. Only in the spring Alyosha returned to literature and poetry.

And again, again gently and persistently pulled me into their motherly embrace, the land always deceiving us ...

Everything acquired in communication with Baskakov gave impetus to the imagination and poetic perception of life. These nonchalant days ended when it was time to enter the gymnasium.

Book Two

Alyosha "left Kamenka, not knowing that he had left her forever." Parents took their son to the city and settled with the tradesman Rostovtsev, a tall, slender man with very strict life rules. There was persistent severity and exorbitant pride in him - Rostovtsev was proud that he was Russian.

The situation was miserable, the environment is completely alien. The lessons in the gymnasium were carried out breech, among the teachers there were no people of any interest. Alyosha did not make friends during his studies. All his gymnasium years, he lived only the dream of a vacation, a trip to his family - now in Baturino, the estate of his deceased grandmother, since his father, cramped in money, sold and for a long time he "lived a gentleman."

Over the years, I have turned from a boy into a teenager. But how exactly this transformation was accomplished, again, God alone knows.

When Alyosha moved to fourth grade, a disaster happened in the Arsenyev family: brother George was arrested for involvement in the "socialists". He lived for a long time under a false name, hid, and then came to Baturino, where he was denounced by a clerk of one of his neighbors and the gendarmes took him.

This event was a big shock for Alyosha. A year later, he left the gymnasium and returned under the parental shelter. The father at first scolded, but then decided that his son’s vocation was not a service and not a farm that had by then fallen into complete decline, but “poetry of the soul and life” and that perhaps a new Pushkin or Lermontov would come out of it.

Alyosha himself dreamed of devoting himself to “verbal creativity”. His development was greatly facilitated by long conversations with George, who was released from prison a year later and sent to Baturino under police supervision.

From a teenager, Aleksey turned into a young man, he matured bodily and spiritually, felt the growing strength and joy of being within himself, read a lot, thought about life and death, wandered around the neighborhood, visited neighboring estates.

All human destinies are compiled randomly, depending on the fate of those around them ... And so was the fate of my youth, which determined my entire fate.

Soon he survived his first love. Brother Nikolai married a pretty and homely German, and Alyossey met her distant relative, sweet and cheerful Anhen. This love lasted all winter and helped Alyosha survive the death of a distant relative, to whom the Arsenyev family was very attached.

Book Three

After the funeral, Alyosha overtook another blow - separation from Anhen. He did not console him even with his beloved Petersburg magazine received on the day of his departure with the publication of his poems. Having recovered from the pangs of love, the fifteen-year-old Alyosha again plunged into the enchanting world of poetry.

I had a feeling that I had "everything ahead," a feeling of my young strength, physical and mental health, some beauty of my face and great virtues of body shape.

Arsenyev Sr., meanwhile, waved his hand at the farm and most often now was "in the hop." Alyosha watched his father morally sink, and with pain thought about the future aging mother and sister Olya, who was destined to remain an old maid. He felt sorry for himself. Compared to the brilliant youth of his father, Alesha’s present life was poor and wretched. Going to visit, he had to put on the old jacket of his brother Gregory - Alyosha did not have his outfit.

Soon followed by easy hobbies for young ladies who came to neighboring estates. These hobbies again ended in nothing - the young ladies parted for a summer vacation.

All summer Alyosha went to the estate of Brother Nikolai and worked on an equal footing with men. In the fall, he traveled to the city to sell crops. Behind all these matters, the desire to leave Baturino was ripening in Alyosha’s soul.

A year has passed. Brother Nikolai bought a neighboring estate, moved there and hired a new maid - a young married woman named Tonka. Alyosha began a stormy romance with her.

This was a real insanity, completely absorbing all my mental and physical strengths, life only in moments of passion or expectation of them and the pangs of severe jealousy.

At first, Tonka loved Alexei, “then she loved, then not,” and he was terribly exhausted by the constant changes in feelings. Their connection ended thanks to Nicholas, who calculated the culprit of an unseemly story at the request of her angry husband.

Book Four

In Alexei, the desire to leave an almost ruined native nest and start an independent life was growing more and more tangibly. First, Alyosha went to Orel, hoping to enlist in the local newspaper Golos. He arrived in Orel late, just in time for the train to Kharkov, and unexpectedly for himself decided to go to this city, where George had already settled down to take.

The feeling with which I entered the carriage was correct - ahead of me was indeed a considerable, non-fortunate path, whole years of wandering, homelessness, the existence of a reckless and promiscuous.

From the first day, many new acquaintances and impressions fell upon Alexey. The environment of George was very different from the village. Many of the people who entered it went through student circles and movements, visited prisons and exiles.

These people were “narrow, straightforward and intolerant”, they professed love for the people, who embodied everything bright for them, and dislike for the government - the source of all troubles. At the meetings, there was heated talk about the vital issues of Russian life, the rulers and the rulers themselves were condemned, the need to fight for the constitution and the republic was proclaimed, and the political positions of famous writers were discussed.

Alexey felt that this society did not suit him, but he did not have access to other circles. In addition, he liked the “student modesty of existence” of new friends and the ease with which new acquaintances were made in this circle.

So winter passed. George served in the zemstvo council, and Alexey spent all days in the public library. In the spring, returning from a trip to the Crimea, Alexey learned that his father had completely gone bankrupt and had to lay down Baturino. George also presented a surprise - it turned out that he lives in a civil marriage with a married woman, his comrade-in-arms and like-minded person, who did not abandon her husband only for the sake of children.

This sudden discovery that my brother has his own life, from us all secret, is not an affection for us alone, really hurt me. I felt lonely again.

Mental disorder prompted Alexei to some changes. He decided to see new places, went to the banks of the Donets, to Kiev, and finally turned to his native home.

On the way to Baturino, Alex decided to call in Orel to take a look at the "city of Leskov and Turgenev." There he tracked down the editors of Golos, met the editor, the young widow Nadezhda Avilova, and received an offer to collaborate in the publication.

After talking about business, Avilova invited him to the dining room, took home and introduced her cousin Lika Obolenskaya to the guest. Everything happened quickly, unexpectedly and pleasantly. Then Aleksey did not suspect yet that this speed, “disappearance of time” is the first sign of falling in love.

So another love began for me, which was destined to become a big event in my life.

Book Five

Captured by a new feeling, Alexei rushed between Baturin and Orel, where he still got a place in the editorial office, abandoned literature and lived only in meetings with Lika. She then brought him closer to her, then pushed him away, then again called out on a date. Lovers then parted, then met again.

So autumn passed. Their relationship could not go unnoticed. One fine day, Lika’s father, a “nonchalant, liberal doctor,” invited Alexei to his house and concluded a rather friendly conversation with a decisive disagreement with his daughter, explaining that he did not want to see them both living in need, for he realized how uncertain the position of the young man was .

Upon learning of this, Lika said she would never go against her father’s will. However, nothing has changed. On the contrary, in November there was a final rapprochement. For the winter, Alexey moved to Orel on the pretext of working in the Voice and stayed in a cheap hotel, Lika settled at Avilova on the pretext of doing music.

It was not easy happiness, debilitating and bodily and sincere.

Gradually, the difference in natures began to tell: he wanted to share his memories of poetic childhood, observations on life, literary predilections, and all this was alien to her. He was jealous of her for the gentlemen at the city balls, for partners in amateur performances, which he hated from the heart. There was a misunderstanding of each other.

One day, Lika’s father arrived in Orel accompanied by a rich young tanner Bogomolov, whom he introduced as a contender for his daughter’s hand and heart. Lika spent all the time with them. Alexey stopped talking to her. It ended up refusing Bogomolov, but nevertheless left Oryol with her father.

Alex tormented by separation, not knowing how and why to live now.

The feeling of some disastrous loneliness reached me with delight.

Alexey continued to work in Golos. Avilova was sweet, affectionate with him, and Alexey “now saw her even love” for him. He again began to write and print what was written, but this lesson did not satisfy Alexei - it seemed to him that he was writing something wrong and wrong, and he walked the streets in a painful search for some unusual impressions, until he decided to just write down only what sees and feels.

Soon, Alex again decided to embark on a journey. Avilova offered to go with her to Moscow, but Alexei fearfully refused. He still recalls this refusal "with the pain of loss."

From Vitebsk Alexey went to Petersburg, from where he sent a telegram to Lika: “I will be the day after tomorrow”. Having returned home through Moscow, Alexey met Lika at the station.

It was that touching, miserable, that always so impresses us in a loved one after separation from him.

Separate existence was unbearable for both.

Life began in a small southern town, where George moved. Both Aleksey and Lika worked in the department of zemstvo statistics, were constantly together. They spent Easter in Baturino. Relatives reacted to Lika with cordial warmth. Everything seemed to get better.

Gradually, roles changed: now Lika lived only with her feeling for Alexei, and he could no longer live only with her. He went on business trips, met with different people, reveled in a sense of freedom, even entered into casual relationships with women, although he still could not imagine himself without Lika.

She saw the changes, languished in loneliness, was jealous, was offended by his indifference to her dream of marriage and children. In response to Alexey’s assurances of the immutability of his feelings, Lika once said that, apparently, for her she was something like air, without which there is no life, but which you do not notice.

Alexey swore that he would not leave her alone anymore, but he was leaving anyway - so great was his desire for wanderings and a free life.

I appreciated my “calling” too much, enjoyed my freedom more and more dissuasively ... And I didn’t sit at home anymore: like a free day, I immediately left, went somewhere.

Despite his infidelity, Alexei was very jealous of Lika, and their relationship was getting worse. Lika could not completely abandon herself, her life and her desires, and, in desperation, having written a farewell note, she left Orel.

Alexey’s letters and telegrams remained unanswered until Lika’s father announced that she had forbidden her shelter from being opened to anyone. Alexei almost shot himself, quit the service, never showed up. The attempt to see her father was unsuccessful: he was simply not accepted.

Alex returned to Baturino, where he saw numerous traces of "gross poverty." A few months later, he learned that Lika came home with pneumonia and died very soon. It was at her request that Alexei was not informed of her death.

He was only twenty years old. There was still much to be experienced, but time did not erase this love from memory - it remained for him the most significant event in life.